Since 1955, the AI field has gone
through cycles of boundless optimism and sobering disillusion. Yet until
recently, the supercomputer was the go-to operator of machine intelligence. But
three forces have transformed that assumption in the last few years: the surge
in data of all kinds, rapid progress in software to find patterns and insights
in data, and advances in the technology of data processing, storage and
communication.
Now, computing intelligence can
be dispersed globally, marshaled and aggregated as necessary, from far-flung
data centers in the digital cloud. Google led the way, showing the power of
data-driven artificial intelligence delivered over the cloud, not only in search
but also in tasks like language translation and computer vision. AI run through
the cloud is now the dominant approach used by researchers at technology
companies, universities and government labs.
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